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Medieval Sourcebook:
Constance of Brittany and Gerald of Wales on Louis VII of France
Constance of Brittany: Letter to Louis VII of France, 1160
To the venerable and excellent Louis, king of Gaul, Constance,
daughter of Alan count of Brittany, greetings and the bond of
friendship (amicitiae vinculum). I desire your worthy self to
know that I have long held you so in my memory that when very
many men offered me many, many gifts for the sake of love, I never
accepted any of them. But if it should please your generous self
to send to me, who loves you beyond what I can say, some token
of love, a ring or anything else, I should value it more highly
than the whole world. I thank you for receiving my messenger so
honorably. And if there be anything in our parts, which you would
like to have, a hawk or dog or horse, I beg you not to delay informing
me of it through the bearer of the present letter. You must take
it as true that should Fortune refuse to smile full-heartedly
upon me, I should prefer to be married to any humble man of yours
than to become Queen of Scotland. I shall prove this by action;
when my brother, Count Conan, returns from England, I shall travel
to pray at St. Denis and to take advantage of your presence (there).
Fare thee as well as I fare.
THE PRAISEWORTHY CONTINENCE OF LOUIS VII OF FRANCE
To come closer to modern times and neighboring kingdoms, I shall
recall some memorable deeds of the most christian king of the
Franks, Louis, whose happy reign was in our time and who was father
to that king Philip (II, 1180-1223) beneath whom the glory of
the Normans in northern France vanished for good. That king Louis
(VII, 1137-80) was once attacking a stronghold in Burgundy very
dangerous for pilgrims and travellers, named Nonette. After the
campaign had dragged on for nearly two months, he had to return
to Orleans with so severe an illness that his life was almost
despaired of. Doctors, both his own and from all over, came flooding
in to investigate the causes of his sickness with all the subtlety
at their command. At length all agreed that this inconvenience
had happened to him because of his prolonged continence and the
deprivation from sex ("defectu coitus"), for this was
very early in his marriage to his (second) queen, Alice, from
whom he later received king Philip and whom he loved greatly ("non
mediocriter"). Once this had been explained to him in the
presence of the city's bishop, and an assembly too of many abbots
and priors and other religious personages and men bearing the
monastic habit, the king at once responded: "Let us therefore
send for the queen." But since she happened to be in far-away
parts and the disease proved persistent, the common counsel of
all was that in the meantime some girl ("puella") should
be brought to him, through whom he might find a remedy and, as
it were, regain his life. The bishop and other ecclesiastical
dignitaries present explained all this to the king, declaring
that it was his only chance of a cure, and they all promised that
he would not be punished for the sin and that they would stand
as his guarantors for this before God. The good man answered:
"If there is no other cure than this for the illness, let
the Lord do his will on me. I prefer to die chaste ("castus")
than to live an adulterer." And so he committed all to God,
and by the mercy of Him who does not abandon those who lay their
hopes upon Him, he conquered the malice of the sickness and soon
recovered with the aid of a divinely granted remedy. Oh how healthy
("sanum", how conducive to salvation ("salutiferum")
and how very worthy of memory the words of the prince!
A very similar story was told later [1216-7] of his grandson,
a man in whom the laudable nature of so great a grandfather had
not degenerated. When Louis, king Philip's son, (the future Louis
VIII, 1223-8) had long been engaged upon his English invasion,
his knights began to be afraid that the absence of his wife, who
remained in France, and the lack of a conjugal bed would exhaust
the young man's spirit for a long campaign. Some suggested, whether
seriously or in play, that he should comfort his nature in the
meantime with the embraces of a noble girl and with this remedy
alleviate the hot fervor of his virile youth. He is said to have
responded - and strengthened the response with his oath -- that
he was in no way willing to violate, even by a single act of adultery,
the faith due to his legitimate wife ("sponsae suae legitimae")even
to possess the whole of an England completely pacified and in
tranquillity. This grandson, who represented in his person, both
in express words and deeds and by unmistakeable signs, the generous
nature of his grandfather and the martial vigor of his father
was no unworthy scion of the line ("degener").
[Gerald of Wales, De Instructione Principis, I. xx (Opera,
R. S., vol. VIII, 131-3). Cf. Gerald, The Jewel of the Church,
tr. J.J. O'Hagen (Brill: Leiden, 1979), 166.]
HTML by Paul Hyams of Cornell University. See his Course Page?. He indicated that the translations are available for educational use. He intends to expand the number of translations, so keep a note of his home page.
This text is listed as part of the Internet Medieval Source Book. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts related to medieval and Byzantine history.
Paul Halsall April 1996
halsall@murray.fordham.edu
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